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Today on the show we're going to talk a little bit about our economic crisis and collapse. How exciting. I'm here with my friend Jimmy who's been working as a missionary who works in Venezuela. He's been working there for many years. On today's show we're going to talk a little bit about Venezuela, including also about the project that the Radical Personal Finance community was instrumental in helping to get started.

But we're mainly going to focus on the economics of what's happening in Venezuela. I think it's one of the most instructive scenarios because a lot of people worry about what does a total economic crisis look like? What does a collapse look like? Well, in today's world, the place to go if you're interested in seeing what those kinds of things look like is Venezuela.

So, Jimmy, welcome back to Radical Personal Finance. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. So, I would like you to describe. You have been going to Venezuela for 20 years? More? No, 30 years. So, I'd like to begin. Describe what you have observed with your firsthand experience in Venezuela over the last 30 years.

Lay out what has happened over that 30-year timeline up until today, economically speaking. Well, the first times when I was in Venezuela, I remember it was a very prosperous city, very expensive, I remember. We were paying a huge amount of rent for a very small apartment, my wife and I.

Their system, they had a very, the first, I believe, working subway, very modern. So, it was a very modern city and with all those services. Are you talking about Caracas? Yeah, Caracas. I'm sorry, Caracas. And the countryside, the same. There was a lot of progress. You could tell that people were really enjoying a lot of prosperity at that time.

So, that was 30 years ago. Then trace it through because you've been back plenty of times throughout those decades. So, what have you observed firsthand or what have you watched happen as you've stayed in touch with the country over the years? Yeah, it was probably the most radical changes that I saw was probably within the last 10 years.

I saw a rapid, very rapid decline on everything to the point that it was brought to the point in which pretty well everything has collapsed now. In a country that anything that has to do with services and transportation, for example, education, even the judicial system, it's pretty well everything collapsed now.

But what does collapse look like? Are people dying in the streets? Are people just a little bit hungry? Are they just having a slightly lower standard of living? What does collapse actually look like on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, the first thing that you notice is the fact that a lot of people have relatives that have left the country.

5.6 million, I'm sorry, 6 million of Venezuelans have left. So, the first thing that you notice is that in every family, they have one, two, three, whatever members missing because they are living either in Europe or South America, wherever they could go. So, there's a lot of family disruption with that.

The other thing that is noticeable is the amount of business that you see that are just not functioning. Like sometimes you feel like even driving to big cities feels like a holiday because pretty well, I will say, between five to six businesses would be open, not working. And the other one, you could see that they're not.

They're barely making it in their daily business activities. Now, one of the things that I find so interesting, you've done relief work for decades all around the world in disaster zones. But I was interested in your opinion on what novelists have come up with. And one of the things that I've done is I've not spent nearly as much time in actual disaster zones as you have.

But I've read a lot and I've thought a lot. And so, one of the prepping books, the prepping novels that I've always enjoyed was James Wesley Rawls' book, Patriots. And it's my understanding that before I gave you a copy of Patriots, you'd never read any prepping novels. Is that right?

That is correct. That was my first novel. So, they call in the – it's obviously kind of an ugly word, but they call it prepper porn. You know, novels that are written about collapses and crises, things falling apart. So, I gave you a copy of James Wesley Rawls' novel, Patriots.

And I said, "Here, read this and let me know what you think." So, what did you think about that book when I gave it to you? Well, I'm not – I have never been in touch or in contact with anybody that is really a prepper. All the things that I do in that department have to do with my own research, personal research, and my own experience.

I've seen plenty of countries that have collapsed. So, once you see them, for example, Haiti. I was in Haiti and I have experienced firsthand situations in which you definitely need to – I think not to be prepared. I came to the conclusion that not to be prepared for an emergency is the most absurd thing a person could do.

Mainly because emergencies could happen in any country. Like, I remember I was in Chile after he was struck by a large earthquake. And I was assigned to a very, very wealthy neighborhood. And I clearly vividly remember that within two or three days, although they didn't suffer any damages in their homes because they were so well built, but within two or three days, they had empty all their food supplies in the supermarket.

So, they had no food. There were people that had the resources to buy food, but they didn't have any. And so, it was kind of interesting for me to learn that lesson that it doesn't matter if – sometimes it doesn't even matter if you have or do have the funding for buying supplies.

Like, say you had a lot of money to do it, but if there is no supplies, the money becomes worthless. Human psychology doesn't change just because you have more money in your bank account. When people get into that panic mode and they look around and they see that everything is disappearing and they start to worry that everyone else is going to get stuff before I do, they tend to react accordingly and start buying as much as they can.

So, when you compare your experience in Venezuela to what you read in a novel, how does it compare? Was what you see in Venezuela, you know, just – is what you read in the novel way worse than what you see in Venezuela? Is what you read – does it look like what you read in a novel?

Is it worse in real life than it is in the novel? What do you think – after you read one novel, how did that compare to what you actually see on the ground in Venezuela right now? Well, the first thing that drew my attention about that novel was the beginning, when they suddenly had an economic collapse.

And people were not prepared for that. And in some cases, I remember – if I remember well, money became pretty well useless or worthless. And so, that is probably what struck me the most, when you see like the institutions no longer providing the service. For example, there's no banking in Venezuela or it's very limited, extremely limited banking.

So, but, you know, most of us adults have never lived under a situation in which we don't – we cannot count with the bank. And so, we are so used to the bank that – but not having one there, it's kind of – it takes time to get used to.

That was one of the things that probably made me think in the novel, the economic aspect of – what would you use to trade if money or banking was no longer available? You told me that you had a co-worker who wasn't quite accustomed to doing work in Venezuela. And he's coming in and everyone's talking about different projects they're going to do.

And you're telling him, "Well, how are you going to do that? You can't have a bank account. You can't do – you told me that accounting doesn't really exist anymore." Just describe what a hard transition it is for people to learn how to do business in an actual collapsed economy.

Yeah, that's actually a problem we have right now because we do get some funding for which we have to account for. And then, but how do you account for funding when, for example, the money that you use is pretty well useless? And of course, we're using Colombian money now in Venezuela because it's the most accepted form of currency that they have.

Now, they're starting to use dollars as well. But it's quite a challenge because we do have to be accountable to donors. And at the same time, we have to report from a collapsed economy. And so, we're working on that. It's not an easy thing to do. And we need to come to do some negotiations with – even with a – or just explanation to donors in Canada and the U.S.

that we indeed working with a system that is not functional. So, what I find so interesting though is it's not – even though the money is basically worthless, it's still being used, right? It's not like – you're still using the Venezuelan bolivar even though you have to carry around a backpack full of it.

And yes, other forms of currency are being used. The Colombian peso is being used. U.S. dollars have limited convertibility but certainly still have value. But people are still using it. Do you see any evidence of any kind of barter economy? Has that happened or do people just go to other currencies?

No, no. There's a lot of that. I noticed that there is not only that trade like if you have something in your house that you need, you trade it with something else. But also, you know, when you're thinking a collapsed economy and burn is something that I was new for me was the fact that there are things – tools, for example – things that you could use as currency.

Tools, anything that you could really have that you could store it in a place that eventually could potentially be used for trading, either food or supplies or medicines. So, it's something that's new that I've seen that I never even – that I never even considered. I hope this – I'm responding to your question.

I see trade and I see what you said about providing services for food. Like, for example, I have had workers that come to my project and they'll say, "Well, we work for you and we don't want to get paid. We just want a meal or two." So, that's how overwhelming the need could be.

What about precious metals? Does anybody do anything with precious metals? Yeah, well, Venezuela is big on gold. They produce gold and silver and uranium. So, I understand that it's a huge underground market on that. We don't really deal with those things, but my understanding that there is a lot going with that.

But we're on a humanitarian business, not in the gold business. But when you say a huge market, are you talking about government players or people who are connected in the government who are still doing business there? Are you talking about individuals? Is there anybody that's going around with silver coins or gold coins and using that to make purchases instead of bolivares or pesos?

I really try to – if I see it, I probably close my eyes and not respond to the question. So, ask you something else. Is that what you're saying? Okay. All right. So, back to Patriots. What else that you read in the novel was like what you see in Venezuela?

What else kind of had that ring of, "Oh, wow, I'm seeing this every day"? What else? I see people becoming very territorial. There are areas that are controlled by certain groups. And you have to sometimes advise them or ask for permission to the people in charge to go in.

I had a case like we were asked to go to an Indian reservation, but we had to get all kinds of permits from the army and from the local militia. We got the permissions, but I find that the more security issues Venezuela has, the more people become more territorial in some places, especially in the big cities.

What else I have seen? I've seen the crime. The crime is big. Lots of people robbing from the homes. Not so much in the area where I work because it is under different rules and regulations, and I cannot really talk about it. But once you move into big cities, it's totally different.

What else? Well, in the book, we're going back to the book. I think what I like about that book was the fact that this guy, well, it's in a novel, of course, was able to put people that were very sympathetic to each other. There's not a more perfect person, a perfect protagonist who had all the resources and all the ability to build the world's greatest retreat.

That's what that novel certainly profiles very effectively. I think it makes everyone a little jealous. I don't think in reality you will be able to see such a perfect setting. I think it's a novel that is like a dreamland. It will never happen. However, I am thinking seriously about developing my own network of people that would think alike me.

We could right now share knowledge, research, even my own experience doing my own prepping. As I said, I was never a prepper, meaning that I didn't know I was. I didn't even really know I was. I was so much advanced into it until I started meeting other people that had taken that very seriously.

Now, I wish I knew that before because there are so many resources available. I knew it, but I did not really pursue it, exploring what preppers had to offer me. Now, for example, I've been in contact with people that have knowledge in solar energy, people that have knowledge in water sanitation, and survival skills.

I think I've grown in that area. It's something that was my secret life. One of the things that I think about with Venezuela, your comments earlier about Caracas and Venezuela 30 years ago, it's my understanding that Venezuela, if you were to go back 20 to 30 years ago, was in many ways the darling of South America.

If not the most prosperous economy, one of the most prosperous economies, very modern, very advanced, very well developed. I remember in 2005, I studied in Costa Rica. While I was there, I had professors that at that time were using Venezuela. They would use Venezuela as basically the crowning achievement of the kind of development that the world would like.

My professors were very left-wing, and they loved, at that time, Chavez. They loved the development, and they talked glowingly about Venezuela, politically, economically, etc. Venezuela had massive levels of oil reserves. Everyone driving big vehicles and big engines and everything because the oil was so cheap and so widely available.

Now, fast forward anywhere from just call it 15 years, and you have a genuinely collapsed society. Let's pretend that you were living in Venezuela and going back 15 years. A lot of people, I wonder about those political developments. I look and I say, "What was it?" Now, Latin America is very different than the United States, but I think, "Okay, what if two years from now, I'm talking about Senator Sanders?

And what if all of a sudden, Senator Sanders is—or sorry, I'm talking about President Sanders, alluding to the US politician Bernie Sanders, who's probably the most—certainly the most left-wing politician to achieve prominence in the United States that I'm aware of ever, if not for a very long time. And so let's say that we have a President Bernie Sanders.

Now, I don't think it really happened in the United States because there's enough power and enough cultural check on executive power that I think that the risk is much lower. But I think, "Okay, what if the United States is going down the path of a Venezuela, moving very left, and they're going to have this economic thing, and their debt is so huge, and all of a sudden, we're going to be in a situation of hyperinflation?" So that's the context for the question.

Now, let's go back and pretend it was 15 years ago, and you're living in a country like Venezuela. What would you do to prepare 15 years prior for an economic collapse a decade out? What would you actually do? What kind of steps would you take? Say I was living in Venezuela 15 years ago.

Yeah, and you knew—you were living in Venezuela 15 years ago, and you knew that economic collapse was very likely in the future. What would you be doing? Okay, I would—if I was living in a house, I would make sure the house has enough backup for, like, an emergency system for electricity, water, and I would definitely increase the safety of my house.

That's as far as the place where I would be living. Then I would buy—I would do a lot of research on buying a car that would be easy to repair, not to— even I would, for example, look into a car that doesn't—is not run by a computer, and very mechanical, mechanical.

So like an older car with a carburetor that you can work on with simple tools. Yeah, that's correct. I would also get a very well set up shop in which I could self—do a lot of self work as far as electricity, plumbing, welding, welding, mechanic problems. So I'm—so I don't have to depend on the expertise of somebody else in a small—or jobs, or else I could just hire somebody and bring it home and provide the tools.

Because I find it—that is the best way to hire help in Venezuela. Then personally, I definitely would get some money and put some funding— careful, careful, careful—put some funding outside the country if I could afford it at that time. I would—then 15 years ago, I'm still thinking, oh, I will try to get my residency or if I have the facility of— in my case, I was born in a third country, other than the country where I have my citizenship right now.

So I would get my citizenship papers from a second or third country if I have the opportunity. So having two or three passports, I think, would be appropriate. I'm thinking 15 years ago. The other thing I would do is if I had also the funding, I would buy property outside the country.

Like backup property. You mean outside of Venezuela or out in the Venezuelan countryside? No, outside—both, both. Outside in the countryside and outside in the— remember, we're talking that—I'm playing on the scenario that 15 years ago, I did have enough funding, spare funding to do those things. The last thing I would do is I would, for example, if I knew I had some medical issues that I'm neglecting to look into, like hernia surgery and dental work and things like that, I would run and get it done.

Right. So there will probably be more things. This is a question that I think I'm just raining ideas right now on top of my head. I'm sure there will be more that I could come up. The list will be big. Would you save food? Yeah, I don't think—I think food will be—yes, but not a top priority because I would definitely do it.

But enough—I know that it's been such a slow collapse that food—for the collapse of country, it didn't happen overnight. It happened over a period of 10, 15 years. Okay. What else? What else would you do? I would always have all my paperwork in order as far as unavailable, ready for somebody to take over in case I'm not in the country anymore.

So what you mean is like your documents, you would have a power of attorney so that if you had to flee from Venezuela to, say, Brazil or Colombia, that you would have the paperwork in order that somebody could manage your affairs? Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah, I would do that.

But I'm just thinking it—I'm thinking that because I'm thinking to do that right now from the place I'm living. So I'm just doing some reflection as far as how to do it. Before, as you know, my wife passed away recently, so I no longer have that backup. So I need to rethink on all that.

And my kids are pretty well gone, living outside the country, well established. So I'm pretty well on my own. Right. What if you—so we did that scenario, pretending that you had plenty of money. What if you were trying to go work through that scenario again, but you didn't have a lot of money?

Let's just say you had maybe $5,000 saved, so you couldn't go and buy another citizenship. You couldn't go and buy property outside of the country because you don't have enough money. You have a few thousand dollars. What would you do with a few thousand dollars to prepare for an economic collapse?

Okay, $5,000 saved. Okay, the first thing is change my car for a more manual car. So a simpler car, fewer computers. Is fuel efficiency important? Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. Like right now, for example, I just bought myself the best car I could ever dream of in Venezuela, and I'm fixing it in response to this.

I bought a Volkswagen, a 1970 Volkswagen. And I'm putting a new engine and putting everything brand new. A Volkswagen bug, like a beetle? Yeah, beetle. And basically, I'm buying it because of the gas efficiency. I could go for miles and miles with that little four-cylinder, 1,600cc engine. And while if I use a different car, the first issue is there's no gas.

You're going to get, like if you're lucky, you get up to 30 liters every three days of gas. And that's if you stand in line for hours and hours? Oh, yeah. You have to pretty well sleep overnight there for sometimes even two nights to get so you're entitled to 30 liters of gas.

So some people even – it's free gas, so some people do it as a business. They just sleep there for all week, and then somebody – and then a person like me that doesn't have the time to do it will come and buy them from them at an exorbitant price, though.

Because they don't have the same supply. It's an item in very short supply. Okay. So you would get an older car that was simpler, didn't run with a lot of computers, and that was fuel efficient. What else would you do? $5,000. I'm sticking to my – I have to stick to my budget.

Well, keep your $5,000. Let's assume that you sold your more modern car to buy the older, simpler one. So you still have $5,000 left. You just traded your car out. Okay. I definitely would improve – spend a couple of thousand dollars in making improvements as far as the efficiency of the electricity and water of my house.

And obviously more security, more fences or whatever that needs. Okay. That is if I could do my work. And lastly, I'll definitely buy tools. I'll be prepared with every tool, simple tool, that even if I don't know how to use it, I know that I have somebody else that will have the expertise to use it.

So that I have done it now. Like, for example, if you come and see my shop, it's pretty well prepared for every possible scenario somebody that is handy could face, even though I'm not really a handy person because I don't have the time, but I'm prepared for everything pretty well.

Right. The idea is if you have the tools, the first thing is you have what you need to do improvements on your own home, repairs on your vehicle, things like that. And what's happening in Venezuela is the parts are not fairly available. And so if you have the tools, then you can make things work.

The second benefit of the tools is if you have the tools, then you can often use that to provide a means of living for yourself. So whether you're paid in money or whether you're paid in some kind of barter transaction, if you have the tools, you can still support yourself and make a living, even in a collapsed economy.

And then the third thing is if you have the tools, then even if you don't have the knowledge, but you have the tools and perhaps some raw materials, you can hire somebody who does have the knowledge to come and work on things for you and help you improve your own situation.

Is that good, Zachary? Yeah, I'm going to add something that I just finished thinking of. And it's a good question because, you know, something that I'm building right now, right away. And one of the things I would do with such a small budget would be to stock up myself with tools for agricultural work, like shovels, you know, chainsaw, anything that would make agriculture, facilitate agricultural work.

Say, for example, 15 years, I have no longer the facility to work. Then I move into a farm and I ask the person in charge of the farm that I would exchange my resources, which are tools and maybe some kind of knowledge that I have in agriculture for land, because I don't have the land.

So we will go 50/50. We will, both would probably likely benefit from that. But I would also move into a farm and start my own, you know, self-grow food program with goats and whatever, whatever I could do to help me out with that or help out my family, rabbits, fish, whatever.

So I'm still with my $5,000. Right, right. Okay, let me ask you another thing. In the prepper world, kind of the survivalist world where they got names for everything, everyone talks a lot about bugging out. And there are different ways that this word is used, but I use it in two senses.

The first sense is, you know, people do something like they create a bug out bag, which is a bag that's a backpack that they try to be prepared with things that they might need in advance. So maybe a tent or some food or an extra, some tools, some things like that.

So that if they had to leave their house and go walking away, then they could do that and they could survive in comfort on the road. And then also there's another sense in which people might use it in a bigger sense, such as internationally. You mentioned having another passport and some land in another country.

I still believe that one of the best ways to survive and thrive during the current Venezuelan crisis is if you're interested is obviously it involves you're leaving your community, but it's just simply to not be in Venezuela. You know, those who left when they saw that things were getting bad, who went to another country and went to live in Colombia or Brazil or really anywhere in the world that's not Venezuela are not suffering as much as those who are still there.

So do you see people like in the middle of a crisis? Do you see people going out and walking with the things they can carry on their back? Is that something that that is at all relevant in a Venezuelan crisis? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We just there's the escape by foot with all the only their belongings.

And we're not talking 10, 20,000, 20 families I've seen. I have counted thousands crossing the Colombian mountains in one single day, carrying all what they own. And I have we have taken food supplies to them. And it's kind of sad to see that people are just escaping the country with what they have in their hands.

It's all what they own. And thousands of them. So it was I mean, obviously, it was a leading question. I knew the answer to it. But I just want to emphasize this point that you actually do see thousands and thousands of people who are fleeing their homes on foot because the crisis is so bad.

So they are fleeing. You know, they're fleeing their homes. And we're talking about families with children. We're talking about. Hold on a second. Driving and podcasting sometimes go well together. Sometimes they don't. So we're talking about families with children, multiple children, and they're hiking, hiking with their backs, oftentimes also just fathers going to look for work.

But literally people walking out of the country every single day, thousands of people trying to get out. So I've always, you know, think I've often thought about bugging out on foot like, OK, it's a little far fetched, but it really does happen. It really is happening in today's world is the point.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of sad to see it happening right now. So we speak right and definitely about the bug, whatever bug you call it, bug out bag. I took it. I just want to comment this. I took a training, a three day survival course with the German army.

And boy, oh boy, if they ever put an emphasis on that bag and what should be into so much so long that right now, as I talk to you, I'm walking with that with my with my bag. I'm thinking, you know, do I have everything that I need? You know, I'm about to catch a plane and go to one to another mission.

All right. We're at the airport. And so we've got about one minute. Any final words of advice that you would that you would give to my listeners based upon your experience there in Venezuela? I'll take that whatever prepping thing you do very seriously. I've seen it. It's worth it.

Don't don't let other people discourage you. Unfortunately, it's something that will eventually pay off. I'm certain. And not because I'm afraid of what could come in the future. It's because I've seen I live through it. So I know I know I know what prepper to be in a prepper means.

And and it's not something that should not be taken lightly. All right, Jimmy, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Send me the link. So I'll send it to my. Yep, I will. All right. Dropped him off. And so I'll just wrap up this podcast here with you and just simply tell you a few things.

It's always a little bit challenging for me to get people to to tell all the stories on a podcast that they will tell me. I don't have a recorder on. It's a continual challenge, especially a challenge for Jimmy, who's working in Venezuela. And of course, he wants to be very, very polite and very cautious about everything he says just because he faces significant danger with the work that he's doing there.

But you've heard, I think, enough from him to inform you've heard enough from a moment. You've heard enough from him to get some idea of what the actual circumstances are like. Now, having been a student of this stuff for a long time, I'll emphasize a couple of things. And these are informed.

These these ideas are informed by personal conversations with people who are living in Venezuela and who are who are going through it. And one in one way, the actual on the ground experience there is worse than what you think about. It's worse than what you read in a novel.

And that is really sobering. When I first gave Jimmy a copy of Patriots and I said, here, read this, is he came back to me a couple of days later and he said, everything in that book is what I see every day in Venezuela. Everything in that book is just like what I'm living, what I'm experiencing and what I'm seeing.

And that really sobered me. Now, over the years, years ago, I first read Patriots. And my thought was, well, I enjoyed the novel. I enjoy it. It's a lot of people don't like the style of writing where it's extremely detailed. But that's my I enjoy that style of writing.

I'm a detail oriented person and I enjoy I enjoy it when authors go through and give all those those details on how to do stuff. Basically, that novel is a prepper manual wrapped up with a little bit of a storyline. And so I really enjoyed that. But I've always thought far fetched, right?

Far fetched. And certainly there are certain things about the plot. I won't I won't go into the plot details, but certain things about the plot details specifically are far fetched. The protagonists are they're not real human beings. They're idealized human beings, which I actually most people hate that they want their protagonists to be real.

I don't mind a superhero protagonist. And so I like it, even though those things and those things are far fetched. But I've always thought the disaster scenarios were far fetched. I've always thought, well, I could see how it could get bad, but not like that. And so when Jimmy reads it and says, yeah, everything in here is exactly like what I am experiencing and seeing in Venezuela, that is true.

I found that really sobering. I still I find that really sobering. And this was after I had come to a similar conclusion. Venezuela has changed me personally because I used to say, oh, I could see how these things could happen a little bit, but they're not that likely. But when I have actually seen it up close and personal, it's changed me and my own my own thoughts on on how serious and it's caused me to take things that previously I thought, well, OK, that's nice to have.

But that's pretty far fetched. It caught me. It caused me to be much more serious. And then when Jimmy comes and says everything in this novel, which is an extreme novel, is what I'm seeing on the ground every day. That's a that's really sobering, very, very sobering for me.

And so in some ways, real life on the ground is far worse than than what you would expect. But in other ways, it's actually not. And so you would think that, oh, just a collapsed world is the end of the world as we know it. And nobody would ever want to be there.

But yet Jimmy is day and night going into Venezuela and living in Venezuela. And in some ways, although the shortages and whatnot are acute, in some ways, life can look somewhat normal. It's a different kind of normal. You have to understand, well, who's in charge of the road at a certain time and which is the militia or the government or the military or the police?

Like who's in charge of it right now? And you have to think about what your relationships with those people are in terms of where you can safely go and what you can safely do. And, you know, there are a lot of things that are that are different. You sleep with your lights on so that the house doesn't look deserted, so that there's more of an ability to defend from thieves.

And but yet life goes on. You know, babies are born. People die. Life goes on. And so it's such an astounding contrast to me where it's not it's not all one thing or all the other. It's not all a nightmare and all a disaster or all good. It's just it's life and it's different and it's all mixed up.

But it's life. And so I find it very sobering. And the thing that I often wonder about is I feel like a fear monger when I talk about Venezuela. And that's always been a major concern of mine, a fear of mine. I don't like to be the kind of person that looks foolish.

I don't like to be the kind of person that has an extreme opinion and then says that. I've never really been drawn to people who are just spout off extreme opinions all the time. And so I don't like to be a fear monger. I don't want to be known as a fear monger.

But when I look at Venezuela, it's chilling to me because of the the the pathway and the fact that went from great wealth and then instituted all these policies. And now it's it's crazy. Jimmy gave me a gift. I gave him properly gave my wife a gift the last time he came out of Venezuela.

And he he gave her a purse that is literally woven out of money. I should take a picture and publish and publicize it and put it online just so you can see it. But it's very elegantly done and it's very thick. It's a normal sized purse where the entire thing is made from banknotes.

The body of the purse, the flap of the purse, the straps, the entire thing is woven with these banknotes that have been folded together and and basically knit together to make a chain that you can use this as a purse. And I thought when I saw it and I started looking at I thought, well, I'm going to have to there's a statement that I can never make again in the future.

There's people who are prone to saying, well, paper money, there's no intrinsic value about paper money. And I'm going to have to, you know, gold has an intrinsic value or something like that is better than paper money. I'm going to have to modify that statement because I never would have thought of weaving a purse out of money.

But that's that's what I have sitting in my office right at the moment. A purse that's woven out of money. And in some ways, it's actually a good thing because money is generally not made out of pure paper. It's a cotton paper. It's a fabric plant. And it's stronger than just pure paper.

So I guess if your if your money supply becomes worthless, what you can do is go ahead and weave a purse out of it. And here's somebody making a living by by taking money and then turning it into something more useful than money. But that's chilling to me because although I believe very emphatically and I think there are very good arguments to say that a country like the United States is very different than Venezuela.

The problem is that if you go down a certain path for a certain length of time, if you go down 10 years of of of higher socialism, and then if you have some kind of extenuating circumstance like a fallout of a market in Venezuela, the collapse of the oil prices and the oil market just devastated them.

And there are some of these situations that exacerbate the problems. Like if those things happen, I don't see how any country is immune. And so you're always doing kind of basically a calculation to say, how far are we away from that? I don't think that that kind of collapses is probable in any way in the United States at the current at the current time.

But ask me in 10 years. I'm not so sure. You know, ask me in 20 years. I'm not so sure. I don't think it'll be in that situation, but I'm not so sure. I'm not as confident as I once was in those kinds of of of kind of sure predictions.

So when I when I look at it and since I've started talking about Venezuela here on the show, I've been so fascinated. I've got lots of stories from listeners who've told me stories about their family members, their family members in a difficult time and also their family members that escaped.

For example, one listener told me about his father in law, who, you know, 15, 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, I forget the exact time now, but he he saw the writing on the wall. He looked and he said, just like the I see, I can't quote it many, many, whatever the writing on the wall with Nebuchadnezzar's son.

He saw the writing on the wall in Venezuela. You know, the days of this kingdom are numbered. And so what he actually did at that time of Venezuela is he sold all of his real estate in Venezuela and then he just moved to renting and he rented his house and he moved his money abroad, put it in foreign banks outside of Venezuela.

And then as the crisis started to worsen a number of years ago, he went ahead and left. But he saved his family's fortune because he had sold his real estate and turned his real estate into cash and was renting and he saved his family fortune by putting it abroad.

And that that way they were able to pick up, go to another country and set up another life again. And so I've heard stories like that. I've often wondered, would I be would I be the person who is sure enough in in the future and sure enough and positive enough about the impending collapse and the impending problems that I would I would go ahead and take those actions?

I'm not sure, because that kind of thing requires courage. And I've often wondered, do I have enough courage to take those actions to be confident enough in what I see with my own eyes? And I hope I would, but I'm not sure. And so I share these ideas with you because you probably like me.

You think about this stuff and you think, well, what would I need to do? And if you listen to what Jimmy says when I ask him, what would you need to prepare? There are some simple steps that you can take. There are some simple actions. For example, you can have a workshop with tools that workshop with tools can be useful now and valuable now.

Doesn't cost all that much money. You can buy tools secondhand or you can go and buy them new. And at most we're talking for a fully equipped workshop. We're talking, I mean, a few thousands of dollars. It's well within the range of anybody to have that. And yet having that workshop filled with tools is the difference between having a semi comfortable life in Venezuela or an uncomfortable life.

The ability to do things for yourself, the ability to fix your property, the ability to provide the things that you need. Having those gardening tools is very simple. You and I could go out to Home Depot or other place like that, and we could have half a dozen shovels and all of the hoes and rakes and all of the things that make gardening doable.

And yet those tools are extremely valuable right now in Venezuela because those tools are very hard to get and very expensive. There's plenty of labor. There are some seeds. Seeds are in short supply as well. So you can buy seeds and set them aside and store them to some degree.

That's hard to store seeds for the very long term, but it's possible. But those tools are extremely valuable. And that's the kind of thing that I've always thought was just ridiculous. You know, James Wesley Rawls is big in his kind of flair of preparedness, and he's been on the show several times.

But in his flair of preparedness, he's all about having the hand tools and being prepared to make do in an 1800s style of life. And I often look at that and I think, "Come on. It's not going to be the case." But it is the case. One of the things that's happening in Venezuela right now is the electricity is just getting so much less reliable.

They do still have electricity, but it's gone from--you know, right now, and it varies depending on what region of the country, but you're at about four hours a day of electricity. So if you're not prepared to live on four hours a day of electricity comfortably, you start to have some significant problems.

And it just goes on and on. So the point is that the preparations don't cost that much. Many of us could do something like install a few solar panels on our roof, or they don't even have to be on your roof. You could just have some solar panels. Many of us can have a home battery backup system.

And yet that kind of thing is priceless, to be able to have some lights on at night when the electricity is off versus making do on something like candles or the flashlight on your cell phone. It's just the difference between living semi-comfortably versus being very uncomfortable in the middle of a collapse.

So those basic preparations that I talk about are very well worth doing. And I think that they are worth doing even if you think, "I'm going to leave." You know, I have this whole course that I teach on how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis. And the basic idea that I have is the best way to avoid an economic crisis is by not being where there is an economic crisis.

And so you'll notice that Jimmy said, when I asked him, "What would you do?" He said, "I'd have a couple of passports, and I would have the ability to leave the country. I would have a place in another country." Now, the couple of passports are not actually strictly necessary.

You could do it, but the problem that Venezuelans all around the world are facing right now is they literally cannot renew their passport. I've spoken to so many Venezuelans who they still have their passport, but the Venezuelan consulates and embassies all around the world have closed. Or if they are still open, they're providing minimal services, and they don't physically have the ability to print passports.

The passport paper is not available. And so the Venezuelan government is basically not printing passports. It's my understanding that if you're willing to pay a huge amount of money and you're in Venezuela, you can get one through a back channel. But, I mean, it's huge amounts of money. So it would have been far cheaper years ago to make sure that you just kept your passport up to date.

I think about that with my American passport. An American passport has an exigency, a validity period of 10 years, where it's valid for 10 years. But I don't want to get to the point where I have a passport that's nine years old. I gripe and complain about going and paying the, you know, almost $200 to have the thing renewed or $130 or $140, I guess.

I gripe and complain about that, but I don't want to be in a situation where I don't have many years of validity left on my passport. And all of a sudden, something weird happens and the U.S. government can't get passport paper. Obviously, far less likely than the Venezuelan government, but still, I think about that.

But most of the Venezuelans I've met, thankfully, many of them have multiple passports from multiple countries. So they have the Venezuelan passport, but they're traveling on their Spanish passport, or they're traveling on their Canadian passport, or their American passport, or some variation of a different passport. And those things matter.

And so if you have some money offshore, if you have another passport, if you have a place you can go and you can live, and more importantly, you can go and work legally so that you don't have to just live on your savings, you have the ability to live well.

And if you talk to people, Venezuelans all around the world, they'll tell you the same thing. But there are a lot of reasons why you might not want to leave. One of the things that often really bothers me about the idea of leaving is simply the people that you're leaving.

Jimmy is a missionary, and he's working primarily through a lot of different Venezuelan pastors and a number of different churches. There's one primary church that's the basic center of distribution. And one of the things that I think a lot about is the importance of those people who are staying.

Many of the pastors there could leave, but they don't. And this is something that's always bothered me about the plan of leaving. When Jesus is talking about in the Gospels, he says that it's the hireling, the hired hand, who runs away during a time of trouble. And I think that that's the basic realization that so many Christians have, especially Christian pastors, is they look around and like, "How can I leave?" Yes, I may be able to go and save myself, but that's because I have money.

That's because I have time. That's because I have resources. But these people, my brothers and sisters, and then our neighbors, these are the people that need me. And so, you know, when Jesus said, "Love your neighbors," that doesn't just mean love your neighbors when times are easy. That means love your neighbors when times are hard.

So whether it's an economic collapse or a flu pandemic or whatever, your neighbors need you at that time more than they ever do when times are good. And one of the things that you often will see in difficult times is there can often be a religious revival, a new birth during times of difficulty.

Because when people are rich, when everything is easy, it's very easy to forget about God. You can see that just by looking around you. Look at the rich nations of the world, and you usually see that they don't really have—they don't care much for religion. They don't care much for God.

And it's just easy to say, "Well, I can provide for all the needs of myself, and so why do I need this God person that you speak of?" It's when people are facing times of difficulty, whether it's in their personal life, the death of a loved one, a very difficult situation, a moral crisis, or societal times where there's an economic crisis or a collapse in the community that people start to think about religion.

They start to think about where is God in this. And that's a time that it can be a time of very fruitful harvest. The major church that Jimmy is working in in Venezuela is thriving right now. It's absolutely thriving. And it's not because the church has some kind of tons of money that they can give away.

Yes, they're doing a lot of things through the church, but it's thriving because in a time of great spiritual darkness, that's a time for the light to shine forth. And so even if you had a plan to leave—this is one of the things that's always bothered me about focusing primarily on the value of leaving— even if you have the ability to leave, that doesn't mean you should leave.

That's when people are going to need you more than anything. And so there's a value in both of those things. There's value in being prepared to leave, and then there's value in being prepared to stay. And that's why I try to do both of those, is that I want to be able to leave if the circumstance is genuinely best served by leaving.

There are lots of individual crises that would result in my needing to leave a place that didn't mean I'm betraying or abandoning people that I care about, those that I'm called to serve and to love and to help. There are many ways to—many things that could happen that would be best just simply for me to leave, and so I should be prepared to leave.

But on the other hand, I need to be prepared to stay as well, because I'm not going to abandon the people that need me in the middle of a crisis. There's a passage in Scripture that has always haunted me. It haunted me in a good way, meaning I think about it a lot.

And it's from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 28, and God is telling the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. He's prophesying, and basically God is sending them into bondage. As a result of Israel's sin, God is sending them into bondage, very specifically. And he's saying, "My judgment on you for your sin is that you are going into bondage, but here's what I want you to do." He says, "Go, build houses, have children, build houses, settle down." And then he says to the people of Israel, he says—trying to quote Scripture while driving while recording a podcast is sometimes challenging.

He says, "Seek the good of the city." I think it's Jeremiah 28, something like verse 14 or 16, somewhere in the middle of the chapter. He says, "Seek the welfare of the city." So don't go into bondage with a bad attitude. Don't go in and just bristle at the fact that you're in bondage.

He says, "I'm judging you, and I'm sending you into bondage. You're going to go and be slaves, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to build houses, plant gardens, have children, and I want you to seek the good of the city." He didn't say run away.

He didn't say run away where you can live more freely. He said, "I want you to seek the good of the city." And then later, the next chapter is where one of the more famous verses of Scripture comes from. "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, plans to give you hope in a future." Not to—I can't quote the verse, but you know the verse.

Plans to give you hope in a future. It's the favorite verse of 33% of graduating high school seniors in a Christian school when they're asked to say what their favorite verse is. It's the verse that everyone loves to claim for themselves without wanting to go through all of the judgment that has just been said in the previous chapters.

We all want to claim the—you know, "For I know the plans I have for you," but we don't want to claim God's judgment. So it's just—that verse always sticks with me, is that you often don't see a sense in Scripture that it's God's plan to say, "Well, go save yourselves.

Run away where it's easy. Go where you can be free and build this for yourself." You see an attitude of submission. Submit to the judgment. And yet, seek the good of the city. Seek the welfare of the city in the midst of it. And that's something that I've often thought a lot about.

Would I really—let's say I were Venezuelan. Would I really leave Venezuela? Or would I stay? And would I seek to want to be prepared to love my neighbor, to help my neighbor, to serve my neighbor? Would I want to be prepared to stay and to serve in the middle of my community that is in great need?

To help to see law and order restored in a lawless environment? And would I be willing to seek the good of the city? Because there's a time for the light to shine out, and God's not concerned with my pleasure and my comfort in life. God's concerned with His kingdom.

And if everyone who runs away in the middle of trials, then you wonder, "Is this really what it means to build the kingdom?" So, rather, of course, personal musings and just some thoughts. But as you think about what Jimmy had to say about Venezuela, just consider yourself. Consider the situation that you're in, and consider what you can do to be prepared if you face an economic crisis.

I think that it's very real and very genuine. And it's one of many reasons why there's value in pursuing stability in your own life and pursuing financial independence. You have the ability to help. Jimmy is going into Venezuela as a missionary, and you helped send him. You've not paid for any of his money.

The money that I've collected here on Radical Personal Finance, we turned into just stuff. And we're feeding thousands of people in Venezuela right now with the projects that have been established there, thousands of people. And it's opening up tremendous doors for the gospel. Right now, we just had a new invitation.

Years ago, all of the prisons in Venezuela ejected all religious work out of the prisons, and they closed down all the churches. Well, now, I have to check with Jimmy before I talk about this stuff, because some of this stuff seems to be private. But if you're hearing this, then you know it's okay to say it.

But right now, what's happening is that the prisons are in such need that the agricultural project that you got off the ground is actually a project that is producing enough that it's being used to feed the guards and the prisoners. And the condition of the food, of helping and teaching them and planting gardens and going in and setting up gardens so they can feed themselves, is that we can reinitiate the religious work, the Christian churches and other work inside of the prisons.

And so that's just a tremendous opportunity, because if you think it's bad to be a prisoner, and it is in your country, try being a prisoner where you're a prisoner inside of a collapsed society. And just think about what those men and women need in the middle of that chaos.

Try being a prison guard in the middle of a collapsed society and think about what those men and women need. So there are opportunities all over the place, and that's what is, to me, so meaningful about the Christian faith, is that when times are good, there are opportunities to serve.

But when times are bad, there are far more opportunities to serve. So, I guess in closing, I would simply say, take the lessons to heart. Don't be caught unprepared. Be prepared to stay and to thrive if you're going to stay, and be prepared to thrive if you need to flee.

Venezuela has changed me. If you were to go back ten years and say, Joshua, or even five years, if you were to go back five years and you were to say, Joshua, I want you to talk about preparedness, I would have said, well, I'll talk about it, but I'm going to be fairly conservative in my recommendations.

I'm going to sound a lot like FEMA and talk to you about the basic stuff. But these days, after seeing Venezuela, it's caused me to become much more hardcore myself, much more prepared, and to be willing and desirous to talk to others about the value of being prepared, even to a high level.

Just last night, I recorded a class for my practical family preparedness course, and we were talking about food. I talked through how to do food storage and food preparation, and I discussed different amounts. I talked about having a month's worth of food to be able to feed your family for a month.

Then I talked about having three to six months' worth of food. Then I talked about having one to three years' worth of food saved. I was talking about why, the reasons to have one to three years' worth of food saved if you have the ability. Now, I don't think everybody needs to.

It's actually very difficult to come up with the disaster in which you need three years of food or even one year of food. There are a couple of them that do exist, but it's difficult to come up with them. If you think about when I asked Jimmy, I said, "Would you have food saved?" He said, "Yeah, it's useful.

It's valuable." I know that he thinks it's a good idea, but still, you can grow food. At least in Venezuela, you can grow food. It's not that it doesn't exist. It does exist. It's just scarce and very expensive, but you can grow food if you have the tools. There are other preparations that make a bigger difference to him.

One of the biggest reasons to have food saved and to have lots of food saved is one year of food saved for a family of four is three months of food saved for four families of four. Three years' worth of food saved for one family of four is six months' worth of food saved for a community.

That's one of the most important reasons to have food is so that you can, in the middle of a crisis, you can be in a place of strength to help the community around. Are you going to need six shovels to plant your own garden? Probably not. You probably need two, but if you have six shovels set aside, you can plant your garden.

You can give one to your neighbors to plant their gardens, and you can all come together on the church property or the town square, and you can plant a community garden. The people who are prepared to stand up in the middle of a disaster and a chaos are the people who have the opportunity to have influence, who are the people to have the opportunity to build and to help and to serve.

They're the ones that have the opportunity to rebuild society. We need to be thinking about not just ourselves, making sure that my little tiny family is great, and you come and ask us if we have food, we're going to shoot you, which is ridiculous. You need to be thinking about how can I provide for my community?

How can I provide for my family, my extended family, my neighbors, and my community? Because my ambition is to be part of a community that I would never want to leave. That's the key. That's, in my opinion, is the goal, is to have -- if you don't like the place that you live, if you wouldn't be committed to loving and serving and helping in your community, then you probably should leave until you go find a community that you would.

Which is one of the things that bothers me so much about the whole world of preparedness, where it's like people somehow want to be on their own and they want to talk about, well, it's just me and we're going to make it through and we're going to survive. What about the community of everybody in the community?

So I hope you enjoyed the interview. I hope that these thoughts are useful and they serve you. But there's real value in being prepared. If I see you, next time I do a Radical Personal Vent, I'm going to bring a couple of handfuls of Venezuelan money and just start handing it out.

And I've got the stuff from Zimbabwe. I've got Venezuela. I've got a bunch of hyperinflated currencies in a collection stuck somewhere. But the Venezuelan one is just -- it's very real. And if I can figure out a way to make it happen, I still would like to figure out more that the Radical Personal Finance community can do.

It's just -- it's hard because there are serious safety concerns. There are serious legal concerns. About the closest that I could do an event where it could be a public event would be to do something, some form of refugee relief project in Colombia or possibly Brazil on the border because so much of the listening audience from this show is American.

Americans can't get into Venezuela right now. And so it's just -- it's very difficult. But if I could figure out a way to do it where I think it would be helpful, then I'd like to do it. But there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to help and serve.

It's just -- it's such a crisis right now. It's hard to figure out the best way to do it. If you're interested in helping in Venezuela, the best thing to do is to give money. And I need to talk to Jimmy about doing more. But the best thing to do is to give money.

You know, just a comment on charity. I am extremely skeptical of many charitable projects. Charity is very hard to get right. And I'm deeply skeptical of a lot of charity. But I'll tell you one thing that -- while I retain my skepticism, I'll tell you one thing that has -- where I've changed my tune on.

I used to be very uncomfortable giving money to people. Whether it's the bum on the street or to a friend that was in need, I used to be very uncomfortable giving money. Because I often didn't think that that person would be able to use the money as well as I could.

And so I would say, oh, well, so and so is struggling, and so what I'll do is I'll buy them groceries. And -- because I'm a good -- you know, I'm good at getting a good deal on groceries. And I'll go and get them groceries instead. I've changed on that.

Not that there's not a place for that, right? You don't want to enable somebody who is in a bad situation. If somebody says they're hungry and you know that if you give them money, they're going to go and use it to buy drugs or alcohol instead of food, and they're genuinely hungry, I think you're better served to give them food.

But even with the bum on the street, I've talked to a lot of bums on the street. And one of the things that you find is that if the person's not addicted to drugs, often money is what they need. It's not food. They have enough food. Or they're not -- yeah, they're hungry, but food is not the key thing.

It's money. And they need to get out, be able to get -- solve the problem. A bus ticket home or something like that. Now, unfortunately, that doesn't work when there's drug addiction, which is just much more difficult. But a lot of times money is what's needed. And in charitable work as well, money is actually the most important thing, to give money.

Because a lot of times there are resources available. A lot of times there are resources available in the local area, in the local market, if you just give money. And one of the major problems with charity -- let's say that you say, well, there's starving people in Africa. And you look around a country like the United States and you say, well, you've got all this food.

Well, let's get some food. Let's take some food over to the starving people in Africa. That can be one of the most destructive things possible. Because here's the way that actually works out. If you have -- let's say that you have -- pick a country, I don't know. Right now there's a famine in Africa, kind of these locust plagues.

Let's say it's Kenya. And so in Kenya there are farmers. And those farmers are being devastated by the locusts and by the droughts that are happening right there in Kenya. But those farmers are making their living by growing food, which they're selling in the local area. Now, a Kenyan farm is very different than an American farm.

They look very different. But those farmers are growing food and they're selling that food to their neighbors. And they're providing food for their neighbors and they're making a profit in that process to provide for them. So that's the way that the economy works. Now, what happens in the United States?

Well, what happens in the United States is all of the food in the United States is subsidized. And so the farmers get paid far more for the -- the food is available at far lower prices because your tax dollars subsidize the farmers. And they subsidize them directly through direct subsidies.

They subsidize them through market support, through loans, through cheap money. They subsidize them through the Federal Reserve with cheap debt that's available everywhere. And so an American farm looks very different than a -- looks very different than a Kenyan farm does. An American farm has a team of 20 combines that come in at harvest time and harvest thousands of acres within a couple of days.

The American farmer is using huge mechanical stuff and he's got wheat that's available at tiny, tiny prices. Hang on a second. So this is -- this is the American farm. So what do you do if let's say you're going to give wheat to starving people in Kenya? And so you go and you say, look, I can buy this wheat in the United States at a dollar a bushel.

And that's so much cheaper than what we can buy wheat for in Kenya. And so what you do is you buy the wheat for a dollar a bushel in the United States and then you ship it into Kenya. And you drop it, right? So you drop these huge bags of wheat.

So now everybody in Kenya has wheat. Great. This is so wonderful because now the people that were hungry are no longer hungry. Yeah, but here's the problem. What you've done in the process is you've not only just given away the food to the people who were hungry, which has tremendous moral hazard, because now you're giving people food without having them work.

And if a man doesn't work, he should not eat. There's a reason why if a man doesn't work, he should not eat. You'll destroy his character if he becomes lazy and he just becomes -- comes to look at the food. And you don't have any way as -- he just gets the food without any effort.

And you as an American, you don't have any way to know in the local area, is this somebody who is starving because they are -- they just generally don't have any opportunity or is this somebody who's starving because they have no work ethic? They're not willing to actually do anything.

This is why government programs, welfare programs are such a disaster because a government has to try to be fair. And so they don't have the ability to go into a local community and say, "We're going to discriminate against you because you're just lazy. But we see that you're really in need because you have this other thing and you're not lazy.

You've just had a stroke of misfortune." You can do that with your neighbors. You can know which of your neighbors is in need because they're lazy and which of your neighbors is in need because of a stroke of misfortune. But the government can't do that. So the same problem exists from the charity perspective.

But what you also do is you wind up destroying the market. And so that farmer may have had 20% of his crop left. And if the prices in the market had been allowed to adjust from, say, $3 a bushel to $10 a bushel, he would have made enough money selling his wheat at $10 a bushel to be able to have enough income to keep himself going if he were in the situation where he could actually sell it at $10 a bushel.

But when you, with your charity, come in and you airdrop thousands of bushels of wheat, just plummet it down in parachutes from an airplane, you destroy the market. And so he can't – now not only can he not sell his wheat at $10 a bushel, he can't sell his wheat at $3 a bushel.

And so all his wheat goes bad or he eats it up himself and he can't even sell it because the free wheat is better. And so it destroys the farmer. Well, you do this year after year. And what incentive is there for the farmer to keep on growing wheat?

There's none. And so you put the farmer out of business. You put the farmer out of business. And you put the farmer out of business. He sells his land. And now a few years later something changes and the farmer is not in business. And so now the famines get worse because now there's no farmers and the collected knowledge of how to grow wheat in Kenya – and wheat is just a metaphor here.

In Kenya it would be corn, of course. But the knowledge of how to grow a crop in that context is lost. And so the famine gets worse and worse because of the distorted view. Now, what if instead of giving wheat in that situation you had given money? Well, you would give money and then that money would go and the money would be used to buy wheat in the local markets.

Maybe there's not enough wheat in that town, but regardless it goes to the local markets. And so, yes, you might be paying three or five times as much for the wheat in the local market, but now that money is going into the pocket of the local farmer, which is stimulating the local economy.

And so an infusion of money into a local economy is often one of the least damaging things because the farmer takes it in payment for the wheat, then he goes and he spends it in payment for something else. Even if that's something else, it's just simply he builds a bigger house for himself.

Well, now the money is going from the house into the pockets of the vendors who are selling the construction materials. And the money is going into the pockets of the workmen who are working on the house. And so you say, "Well, what we did is we made the farmer rich." Yeah, you made the farmer rich, but it was far more helpful to the local community because the farmer is still in business.

He has enough money set aside where he can still be in business for the next few years. And even if he just used it to line his pocket by selling wheat at very high prices, now he has the ability to actually provide for all that money is still in the local community.

So in that context, the least damaging thing you could do was to give money. This is, by the way, exactly the same reason why years ago I recorded a show on the importance of price gouging. Price gouging, which there are laws all around the United States and all around the world, was supposedly this is a bad thing.

Price gouging is one of the most valuable things because it serves as a restraint on the market. People will use less of something when it costs money. And then it goes to the increased prices go to reward those people who are taking the risk of serving the market. And even if it rewards the merchants who are selling things at a higher value, that's fine because they still have the money.

And now that they can, they'll use that. They'll save it. They'll invest it. They'll buy other things. Or let's say that a merchant raises his private process massively right before a disaster. Well, the disaster comes through, but now the merchant has a little bit of extra profit that they can use to put their store back together and put their roof back on so they can be back in business quickly.

If you say to the merchant who's selling plywood, no, you can't sell your plywood for $40 a sheet because that's what the market will demand. You've got to sell it at $8 a sheet because that was the previous price. Then now that the merchant's roof gets blown off, what does the merchant do?

He's got no money. You took all his plywood that would have been valuable, and he's got no money. And so all he can do is either hoard the plywood, which means you hold it back, and he can use that to at least put a roof on with his own plywood, or he sells it at sub-market prices.

And now he's out of money. And so now what does he do after the disaster, the hurricane comes through? All he's got to go do is apply for some FEMA loan and go and have some government loan, and the whole market is messed up. And so this is why price gouging laws are wrong.

They're immoral. They should not be done. All they do is they destroy the local market. So charity is often destructive, and it's destructive in short-term projects. You say, "I'm going to get my group of--we're going to go in my mission group, and we're going to go and we're going to build houses." Don't build--the people that profit from that are the people who go on the mission trip because it exposes them to something different.

But frankly, you're probably better off if you just sent the money that you would spend on plane tickets, and then let the person--let somebody local buy it with the local market. Because now instead of you coming in, and where your work is worth $40 an hour, but you're going to go and do some noble service project to go for a weekend, and some noble service project and go and build a house for somebody, just send the $400, make more money, and send the money to the person who needs it, and let them buy it locally.

And then instead of just enriching one family with the new house, which can be great, of course, now you're enriching the whole community. Because not only is it the family that has the house, but it's also the workmen who built the house, and the suppliers who sell the supplies.

So I'm--that's just the tip of the iceberg of the problems with charity. I'm deeply skeptical of most charitable work. And money is really the best thing. So I guess right now--I wasn't going to do a fundraising drive, but if you want to give money to Venezuela, number one is probably you should wait until I design something-- until I design a specific drive of a specific thing that we're looking to fund.

Because I didn't start recording this as a fundraising drive. But if you feel the burden, you feel the desire to give money, send me an email, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'll tell you how to get money to me. I will take it and transmit it to Venezuela. And I think it's--I don't think it's destructive there right now.

Genuinely, what we do with the money is we take the money, we take it into Venezuela. If there's something that's not available in Venezuela, we buy it outside the country, as close to the country as possible, and get it into the country. And then we take the money and we put it to use inside the country.

And there are a number of different things that we're doing. We've sent food into Venezuela. We've sent seeds into Venezuela. We've built all kinds of things. We've sent electrical equipment into Venezuela. We've bought vehicles and gotten vehicles in there. And all of these things are basically force multipliers to help expand the operations.

And it's having a tremendous effect. It's not an exaggeration at this point to say tens of thousands--I'm nervous saying tens-- thousands and thousands of people are being helped, are being fed, and are being encouraged through some of the projects that we're involved in. And your money is what got those off the ground.

So if you feel a desire to give, then reach out to me. Send me an email, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'll tell you how to do that. You can funnel the money directly with no tax receipts, which, by the way, is one of the-- that's another thing. And at some point I'll do a whole series on charity, but I have very little use for tax-exempt organizations, tax receipts, etc.

Even right now, it's just a nightmare in Venezuela trying to do things through tax-exempt organizations. If you need an organization, either a U.S. or a Canadian organization, to funnel the money through, let me know if you want a tax deduction. I understand that, obviously, tax deductions are very valuable.

I'm a financial planner. But what happens is, first, you lose money to administrative expenses, which is fine. Administration is necessary and important. But what happens that's even more difficult is it creates huge amounts of-- huge burdens of bookkeeping and accounting. And that's one of the things that's been so difficult in Venezuela.

There are significant rules on humanitarian organizations about the kind of accounting that they have to do for their money. No government wants to see their tax-exempt organizations abused of just simply cash going out the door and being used as some form of money laundering. It would be the world's greatest money laundering scheme.

We're going to start a tax-exempt organization in the United States of America. All the money that's given to that tax-exempt organization gets a deduction for income taxes. The organization is exempt from the payment of taxes. And, oh, by the way, the organization carries suitcases full of cash to random third-world countries and hands out suitcases full of cash.

Obviously, that is a government agent's nightmare because you can't account for that cash. And so there are all kinds of rules for these kinds of organizations about how they have to account for the cash. And so you go into a situation like Venezuela, it's just not possible to account for the cash.

It's not possible because nobody has receipts. Accounting doesn't exist in the country anymore. And I tried to get Jimmy to talk about it a little bit, but it's hard to get him to do it on the microphone. But accounting just does not exist anymore. You go into Venezuela right now and you explain to them, "Well, let's talk about your double-entry accounting system." "Accounting?

What are you talking about?" It's not possible to do accounting in a world where the money is inflating at a million percent per year. It's not possible to do accounting where you are issued a new currency every few months. You want to get rid of the currency as quickly as you can.

And it's not possible to do accounting, accurate accounting, in a currency where you are dealing with bundles of money. And I'm not exaggerating to say if you take--you cannot change any-- I mean, you can barely change a $20 bill, a US dollar bill in Venezuela. So you go and you exchange a $10 bill.

You're going to receive a stack of banknotes that is filling a backpack, a small backpack. And the banknotes are not dealt with in single digits. Rather, they're wrapped together with tape in one-inch bundles and sorted according to color. And so you say, "Oh, here, these are the orange ones, and they're wrapped together in one-inch bundles." That's how bad the inflation is.

How do you do accounting in a currency like that? You say, "Well, we should do accounting in some kind of foreign currency." Well, how do you do that? How do you do accounting in US dollars in a hyperinflated currency when you've got the official government exchange rate, which is rigged and entirely inaccurate compared to what's actually on the ground, versus--or the black market rate, which is just changing at hundreds of percent per year?

It's not possible. It is not at all possible to do accounting in any kind of foreign currency. So then you say, "Well, then we'll just do all of our transactions in a foreign currency. We'll use Colombian pesos, and we'll have our economy based on that." Yeah, but the problem is that there's not enough supply.

So you can't actually run your life on Colombian pesos because there aren't enough Colombian pesos in circulation for you to do it, and they're too precious. So you can't count on--how do you do an accounting system when you're saving money in Colombian pesos and maybe US dollars, but there are all kinds of currency exchange laws that you can't do, and then your customers can't pay you in Colombian pesos because they don't have them because they're poor.

And so they're paying you in a barter transaction here. I'll give you a basket of eggs in exchange for some rice and vice versa and simple barter transactions. They're bartering in terms of labor. You've got different currencies. There's no way to do accounting, and so there aren't any accountants.

There's no science of accounting. There's no field of accounting. It's all completely broken, and then there's no such thing as a receipt because if you ask for a receipt, people assume--they look at you and assume that you're a government agent, that you're a spy of some kind, and so if you want to get killed, just go around and ask everybody for a receipt.

And so it's almost impossible to do, and so it imposes these onerous regulations, these onerous burdens on Jimmy, who is doing work there to try to funnel money through because they've got to have--if a donor's going to give $1,000, it's got to have a receipt because the tax-exempt organization, the relief aid organization, can't run the risk of getting in a situation where they get in trouble with the government.

That would destroy the whole thing. It's just a nightmare, and so it's far easier to simply give money. So what I've done when I've given money, I just give cash, and I know the people involved. I trust the people involved, and I trust their judgment. Here's the other thing.

You can't write down half the stuff that is done with the cash because it's not legal, but it's moral. The law says it's illegal to do what's being done, but it's the morally right thing to do because the laws are so backwards that sometimes the thing that's morally right to do is not legal.

And then how do you account for bribes? How do you account for all that stuff? How do you account for that legally and put it down and tell the officer, "Hey, listen, I know that we're paying you X number of dollars in order for you to allow this to happen, and we know that--" I mean, you get the point.

And so you've just got to trust the people on the ground, and that's the problem with most charity, is that if you don't know somebody, you've just got to trust somebody because in one circumstance, somebody who is experienced will look at it and say, "In this situation, what I have to do is I have to pay this soldier to let this certain thing happen." Okay, that's the right thing to do.

But in the next situation, the soldier is asking for money, and you look at the soldier and say, "Absolutely not. I'm not going to do it." And you need discernment and experience and wisdom to make that decision appropriately. You can't say what's right and what's wrong in the moment.

So you guys got me. I mean, I got myself going. You didn't do anything, obviously, but I guess that's just what I wanted to share. So I'm not doing a money drive right now. I would like to in the future, but right now I'm not doing a money drive.

What I'm just simply saying is if you would like to give, if this touches your heart, then first look for somebody local. Charity should be done locally. I would much rather you give money to your neighbor who needs it and go and pay somebody's mortgage bill or go and buy food for someone or go and just give cash to somebody who's struggling.

That's probably better than giving it to people on the other side of the world. But if you do feel a desire to give, then just email me, and I'll make it happen, and we'll get all the money on. I mean, we've raised--I forget the number, but it was something approaching-- I don't know, at this point we've raised--I'd have to go and check my records-- but tens of thousands of dollars at this point in time, and we've fed thousands of people.

So it's not that I don't--the work is really good. It's a very productive use of the money, but what I'd like to do is I'd just like to have more of a plan before I do a fundraising drive. So for now, go give to your neighbor. If you want to give, if you just feel in the Lord's--on your heart and you say you want to give, then email me, and I'll tell you how to do that.

Joshua@commercialfinance.com. For now, I would say focus on getting prepared yourself. So I sell two courses on this topic. You probably need both of them. The first course, the comprehensive course called "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis." You can find that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. To date, it's one of my best courses.

I think I may have had one refund on it, and I've had a lot of students go through it. I've had so many satisfied students, and I've had people taking action on what I do in the course. In the course, I will tell you how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis, whatever that happens to be, whether it's a personal crisis or whether it's an international crisis, whether it's an economic crisis caught--brought on by coronavirus or whether it's hyperinflation due to socialism or whether it's the next crisis that President Trump causes or President Sanders or whatever.

It doesn't matter, the cause of it. What matters is that you're prepared for it. And so that's the best course to start with. If you have your internationalization squared away, which in that course I talk about practical preparedness, then I talk about internationalization. If you've got your internationalization squared away or you've done that course, then come take my radical family preparedness course.

You can sign up for that one at radicalpreparedness.com. I'm actively teaching it right now, module by module, and it's being taught in a live format, so you can ask questions on anything you want. So go to radicalpreparedness.com if you want that one. It's not available in the store at radicalpersonalfinance.com yet.

Thank you for listening. Again, radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and radicalpreparedness.com. Your tough Tacoma is here. Your powerful forerunner. Your stylish Camry. Your versatile RAV4. Even your fully electric VZ4X. Your new Toyota car, truck, or SUV is available now. So see your Toyota dealer today. We make it easy. Toyota. Let's go places.